Hmong-led movie starring St. Paul actor Wa Yang debuts at Tribeca Festival

It took almost eight years, and a move from Montana to the Twin Cities, for the co-producer of “Bitterroot” to set foot on his first red carpet in New York.

But as Yeej, who goes by one name, prepared for the film’s world premiere at the Tribeca Festival last week, his phone kept ringing.

His family and friends had traveled from Minnesota for the premiere, along with the film’s cast and crew. They were waiting for him at the theater.

“It’s a huge milestone, and I think we’re all just glad to be here,” Yeej said before the screening. “It’s happy-good stress: [we’re] ready for the world to see it, anxious to see what people have to say.”

“Bitterroot,” directed by Vera Brunner-Sung, is competing at the festival in the best U.S. narrative category.

The film, shot in Missoula, Montana, is one of just a handful of full-length feature films focused on the Hmong American experience. Like last year’s release, “The Harvest,” it drew on a pool of Minnesota talent in front of and behind the camera.

Producers Kazua Melissa Vang and Yeej are both based in Minnesota, as is the lead actor, Wa Yang. Crew members from the Twin Cities also worked on the production, which relied on an apprenticeship model to get more Hmong talent involved in the filmmaking process.

“The production sought to be an investment in Hmong talent,” Brunner-Sung said in a news release. “To make a film alongside and with, rather than ‘about.’”

Caught between cultures

“Bitterroot” tells the story of a middle-aged Hmong man who is grappling with a painful divorce.

Lue, played by Wa Yang, lives with his mother in Missoula, Montana. He takes a cleaning job, helps his mom take care of her root vegetable garden, and sells the produce at the local farmers market. Lue feels isolated but tries to keep his sadness to himself. His mother and aunts want to find him a new wife, but he refuses to get married again a few months after his separation.

In “Bitterroot,” Lue is trying to find an equilibrium between his Hmong and American identities, feeling that he does not belong fully in either culture.

“I can relate easily, just because for me, it’s like a Hmong experience,” Yang said. “Someone who is second generation, Hmong American, in that sandwich generation where there is the elderly and there is expectation from the youth.”

In his acting, Yang, 43, drew from his experience growing up in Minnesota ’s Hmong community. He has acted in numerous movies, while working as a psychiatric nurse practitioner in the Twin Cities.

The main character seems haunted, bringing forward the spirituality in Hmong culture. Spirits have grown out of Lue’s sadness and his mother, played by Qu Kue, is worried. She tries to have her son wear an amulet to protect him, and seeks the help of a shaman, solutions that Lue refuses at first.

After watching “Bitterroot” at the premiere, Chris Moua, 30, who recently moved to New York, was touched by a scene where Lue’s mother prays to her husband who passed away. She asks him for guidance to help their son.

“I have seen in my own mother’s eyes, the struggle to help me feel better about finding my place,” said Moua. “Her, using spirituality and praying to uplift my own spirit.” Moua wears a string on his ankle to protect his soul.

Creating with community

“Bitterroot” is the first movie centered on Missoula’s Hmong community. The liberal-leaning college town was one of the main destinations for Montana’s refugees after the Vietnam War. It has more than 200 Hmong residents today.

Brunner-Sung met Yeej in Missoula, and they started building the project together in 2016. Yeej said he was inspired by his own experience growing up in Missoula.

“I really drew inspiration from my early childhood home,” said Yeej, who also worked as production designer on the movie. “So when setting up the space, I knew that it had to look like something I lived in.” As it was in his parent’s living room, the movie’s decor had a qeej, a Hmong traditional instrument, hanging on the wall.

“We are making sure that the story fits into the Hmong narrative, most importantly the Missoula Hmong narrative,” he said.

Eventually, Yeej moved to Minnesota and met Vang, who joined the project as a producer and also took on the role of assistant director. Vang oversaw the casting and made sure that Hmong artists were part of the creative process. She selected actors she knew by word of mouth or met by traveling to Missoula.

“You can’t go the Hollywood or heightened independent way of casting, with a casting director,” she said. “Because those casting directors do not know Hmong people or minorities, or, I may say, nonwhite actors.”

The involvement of Hmong actors and producers in every aspect of “Bitterroot” guaranteed a realistic representation of the community. In the use of language, for example, actors influenced the writing of the script. In the movie, the elders speak Hmong and third-generation kids chat in English. The main character speaks Hmong with his mother, and a mix of the two languages with his friends.

The “Bitterroot” team wants to bring those nuances to the screen.

“Not a lot of representation of Asian Americans are shown,” said Vang, who has worked as an artist and a cultural producer in film and photography. “From the ’80s to the late 2000s, we got “Joy Luck Club” and “Crazy Rich Asians”; I want to fill that gap with stories and the fun and quirky things that I grew up with.”

The movie also features other communities of color. During the premiere, Karilyn Surratt, 41, was struck by the references made to her Native American identity and realized the similarities with some aspects of Hmong culture. “I love how the Hmong music, the cadence of the shaman at the door, reminds [me] so much of the cadence of Native American music,” she said.

Missoula borders the Bitterroot Valley, a place that was the ancestral home to the Bitterroot Salish Native Americans. In the movie, this is where Lu picks morels, a job that has become easier after recent wildfires. Those forest fires have become more intense in the region as a result of fire suppression, and the banning of Indigenous techniques of prescribed burns .

Even though the core audience of the movie is Missoula’s Hmong community, “Bitterroot” resonates with a diverse public. “It is going to ripple out to the larger Hmong community,” said Vang, “then to the Southeast Asians, to the Asian Americans, to people who work in farming, to the environmentalists, to people who love morel hunting, to people who understand spirituality.”

Following the film’s premiere at the Tribeca Festival, the producers are planning additional screenings, including one in Minnesota in November to coincide with Hmong New Year.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of a “Bitterroot” character’s name and his story arc, and Kazua Melissa Vang’s role when she joined the production.

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